Abstract

Despite persistently high levels of food insecurity in the world and large annual flows of aid from the global North to the global South in support of economic and social development, very little research to date has analysed the link between the two phenomena. This PhD thesis contributes to filling this gap in literature by examining whether development aid has any effect on food security and whether this effect varies with the type of aid provided and with the quality of governance among recipients. It set out to answer these questions using mixed methods in four different levels of analysis: a quantitative study of all low- and middle-income countries; a qualitative country case study of Peru, Ethiopia, India, and Vietnam; a quantitative analysis of household data from the same four countries; and a mixed-methods examination of data collected during field research in northern India. In all four levels of analysis, aid appeared to have a small but significant positive impact on food security, enhanced by the presence of good national as well as local governance. Moreover, some types of aid were found to be more directly supportive of food security than others – as was the case for example with aid to social sectors as opposed to aid to economic sectors or with aid implemented by non-governmental as compared to aid implemented by governmental agencies. Other types of aid, including concessional loans and budget support, seemed to have a positive effect on food security only in countries with a higher quality of governance. I conclude by formulating several relevant policy recommendations, with the most important one being that donors should take greater care in considering which types of aid are suitable to which specific countries, localities, and development goals.